Halelujah! ----- Thank you for your message. After taking the information you've provided into consideration and re-reviewing your websites and account statistics at length, we have made the decision to re-instate you to eBay Partner Network. We do want to work with you over the next few months to see if there are ways to further improve your visitors' interest level in engaging with eBay (i.e., spending more time on our site) and buying on eBay when they come from your sites. We are working on ways to expose more of these metrics to you, and hope to have those up in the next few months. Steve posted this morning to suggest a few ways this could be done (we are attaching the post below). We realize you already keep some of these tips in mind on your sites, but think about which others may be applicable to you and one of our account managers is also going to try to see if there are any more ideas we could work on together and reach out to you in the next few weeks. We did not take the original decisions lightly. We realize the e-mail you received may have been frustrating and apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. We are setting high standards and are committed to identifying and working with our best partners to improve their traffic and will make sure we keep the lines of communication open with you as we go forward. Sincerely, eBay.com Affiliate Team ----- Here is a copy of Steve's post. At the risk of making this post too long, I've tried to answer a few of the key questions that have been posted in the thread. Hopefully this will provide some more useful information to the affiliates who are concerned about how we're evaluating traffic and how they can improve their sites and monetization. What does "engagement" mean? Among other metrics, we measure the time that users spend on eBay after they come through an affiliate link, the number of pages that they view, and their buying activity after coming through the affiliate link. Hopefully this helps to further clarify what we mean. I know that we don't provide reporting on all of these metrics, but we're looking at ways that we can improve that visibility so that you can optimize your campaigns for them. Can affiliates affect engagement and conversion? Definitely. The metrics show that there is a wide distribution of these metrics between affiliates. To illustrate the point with an extreme example, a site that helps potential buyers find and research stereo receivers and then points them to great deals on eBay will probably drive more engaged buyers with better conversion rates than an eBay banner on a ringtone site. How can affiliates improve engagement from their sites? Many of you are already using these techniques and others, but for those who may not be, here are some tips to improve engagement. * Maximize the amount of more unique content to your site. Create commerce-oriented content for your site that engages the user in the shopping experience. Conversely, avoid putting eBay affiliate ads on pages that have little to do with shopping - e.g. ringtone sites, non-commerce oriented social network sites, e-mail services, etc. Also, sites that do little other than offer links to redirect to eBay generally don't perform well. Engage people with content on your site, and make it clear to them on the affiliate links that they will be redirected to eBay to shop. * Use more targeted creatives. If all you have is a simple text link to eBay or a static eBay banner ad on your site, consider using one of our flash creatives. Use what you know about your users and your content: consider using banners targeted to specific demographics (e.g. male vs. female) or categories - which are also available on eBay Partner Network. Also consider using our Editor Kit and eBay To Go widgets, which can be customized to show specific eBay listings for a given category or keyword right on your page. * Integrate eBay links within your content. Sites that find a way to work eBay advertising into the content, rather than just as a simple ad at a top, side, or bottom of a page, tend to do better * Optimize your landing pages. Use what you know about your users to help them find what they want on eBay. If your site is about tennis rackets, avoid landing your users on the eBay homepage, send them a search results page on eBay for targeted tennis queries. * Use our geotargeting functionality. Sending a visitor on your site who is from the UK to ebay.co.uk (our British site) rather than ebay.com (our US site), will significantly improve conversion rates and engagement. You can select this option when you're generating eBay links in the "tools" tab. * Avoid simply incenting visits to eBay or registration with eBay - their primary motivation is typically not interest in eBay or in purchasing from eBay. If you are going to give your users cash back or points, tie those rewards to actual valid purchases on eBay. How can affiliates test & improve their performance? * Set up specific campaigns to test out any new sites, links, content, etc., and ideally, test these approaches at smaller volumes in comparison to your overall traffic. This way you will be able to evaluate the performance of each new campaign separately, ramp up the ones that perform the best, and prune the ones that don't perform. * Leverage the custom ID reports to further segment your testing. In an upcoming release targeted for September, additional category reporting will be made available that will help you see the categories that your users are converting in (at campaign, tool, and program levels) which should help you further target your content and affiliate links.
Were you one of the few to just be banned? Or were you banned before eBay did the mass-banning two days ago?
Good news, as I said they reinstalled some people. Btw their "engagements" points looks so obvious, I find it strange that affiliates who made let's say $5k+/month don't follow them yet have been banned. Something still unclear here, or everything is so simple ?
So am I, have'nt yet been expired but I don't want to so am deleting poor performers and switching several to PJ and leaving a couple of best performers with ebay. BUT, where does one draw the line? A lot of people with good performing sites were expired - I read Steve's post above and agree that would be the ultimate for the advertiser but how to quantify for the affiliate? that's what I would like to know. Are any other "lucky" affiliates taking any action re their sites?
So am I, have'nt yet been expired but I don't want to so am deleting poor performers and switching several to PJ and leaving a couple of best performers with ebay. BUT, where does one draw the line? A lot of people with good performing sites were expired - I read Steve's post above and agree that would be the ultimate for the advertiser but how to quantify for the affiliate? that's what I would like to know. I would be interested in what action if any other non expired affiliate are taking in order to survive the next round?
I agree. For starters, I'm moving my poorer performers to PJN. Beyond that, I see no benefit in further expanding my EPN agenda as matters now stand. It's not worth the time and effort given the extreme risk of termination. I've only been with EPN since the first of this year, and haven't taken time to add other monetization vehicles to my EPN sites except for a related banner or Amazon widget here or there. I'm going to begin by adding Popshops and throwing in Clickbank stuff where I can. I've planned all along to do this, but am prioritizing that agenda. In the final analysis, I may move everything over to PJN. I feel this may provide a small buffer, or delay if you will, to a banning. I'm under no illusion, however, that EPN will never lean on PJN to do it's policing for it.
Yeah I hear you. I put in my application with PJN yesterday to be ready if the axe falls for me. eBay really shot themselves in the feet with this one. I had a handful of sites in the pipeline that are on hold now until I see how this whole mess turns out. The only good thing is it got me off my butt about looking at other avenues like Amazon, PJN, etc.
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=520002478&tstart=0&mod=1219552225901 has Steve talking about the unbanning. They are looking at the emails one by one, and have unbanned some affiliates.
I have also heard of several people being "unbanned". One can only wonder what the criteria was used to produce the expiration list and now what criteria is being used to re-instate people. Smells like some rash and immature decisions have been made somewhere along the line.
Nintendo thanks for keeping us up to date with this mess. I remember when I first read my expiration letter. It was such a shock that it took a while to sink in, almost like a relative passing away or something -- lol dramatic right. Edit: Steve's reply says they expired 300 out of 90,000 accounts. That doesn't sound right, does it?
So EPN have 90000 affiliates in whole ? Simply interesting to know number of competitors Anyway I still thinks it's more than 300 have been banned.
Nope. See that world-of-nintendo.com dude?! That's me! I'm the one who made that thread and also posted... The number of active affiliates is the number that you want!!
Well, who know how many are active? If the number is to be believed, those 90,000 would have migrated from CJ since April. That suggests that a goodly percentage could be considered currently active, but let's not speculate.